Babadook
8
PURE M Magazine
by El Boocho
A
ustralian director Jennifer Kent’s debut
film takes age an old idea of a child’s
fear of the Bogeyman and turns it into
one of the most engagingly fresh horror
movies in recent years. The extremity here is
that not only does the fear disturb the child but
lays its claws into the parents as well.
After the tragic death of her husband, Amelia
struggles to raise her six-year-old son Samuel
when he becomes terrified of imaginary
demons. In order to calm him down one night,
Amelia finds a children’s book called The
Babadook. After reading it to Samuel, Amelia
quickly realizes her son’s demons are not
imaginary as The Babadook soon begins to
terrify them both.
Samuel, played by Noah Wiseman,
commands the attention on screen as he goes
from painfully annoying to eerily vulnerable
within seconds. As an audience, you
sometimes feel the fear expressed on the
mother’s face. As good as Wiseman is
however, this is Essie Davis’s film. Her
character undergoes such manic ingredients of
emotion; from empathetic to chaotic to
demented to placid with a pinch of humor
squeezed in to make the insanity of her
performance
exhaustingly
powerful.
Numerous movies in the past deal with the
idea of the child as the focal point of horror.
The Babadook evolves this idea, very much
like The Shining, when the narrative is taken
away from Samuel and focuses on Amelia.
The Babadook itself is a vicious and
disturbing popup book found by Amelia that
threatens to kill her son; triggering a course of
events that will surely make you jump from
your seat. The sinister looking demon, colored
all in black with hunchback and black hat will
no doubt in the future become a figure of
Halloween parties and The Babadook book
given to horror movie buffs at Christmas.
Although it goes over familiar horror movie
territory, The Babadook is fresh, original and
genuinely terrifying. The performance of Essie
Davis deserves any accolade she receives. A
movie that, in the future, is destined to become
cult classic.